TDK Corporation announced that subsidiary TDK Ventures, Inc. has invested in CO2 removal startup Spiritus to accelerate the company’s innovative direct air capture (DAC) technology to market and to tip the scales in favor of removing billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere by 2050. The origins of Spiritus’ game-changing carbon removal technology began with co-founder and CTO Matt Lee’s world-leading research in complex fluids engineering as a Group Leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Bringing together a hub of incredible minds with CEO Charles Cadieu (founder of Caption Health, IQ Engines) – Spiritus has charted a path towards capturing millions of tons of CO2 per year at a cost approaching $100/ton.
As listed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is a crucial element of all scenarios to limit global warming to 2oC or lower by 2100. Estimates predict anywhere between 5 to 20-billion tons of carbon will need to be captured and removed per year to keep apace. Visionary organizations, such as Spiritus, can increase the efficiency of capture while reducing cost can tap into a future multi-trillion-dollar market.
Built upon the new sorbent material invented by Dr. Lee, Spiritus has developed a passive DAC process along with a novel low-temperature regeneration (desorption) method – a system the company called the Spiritus Carbon Orchard™ – which will enable affordable carbon removal at scale for a wide range of companies and organizations. With this funding, Spiritus is accelerating several major facilities, starting with a New Mexico pilot facility capable of 1,000 tons per year of carbon capture when fully operational, followed by a 2 million ton per year Orchard One project in Wyoming. Spiritus is already gaining traction with partners as they demonstrate the efficiency, scalability, and transformative potential of their technology in the carbon removal industry.
TDK Ventures President, Nicolas Sauvage commented, “It is truly inspiring what the Spiritus team has been able to accomplish. Their creativity and prowess are driving the cost of high-quality CDR as low as we have ever seen in a way that can be deployed at scale in a matter of months, not years. Spiritus is exactly the kind of company TDK wants to champion – hard, materials tech that can change the world for the better. I know I speak for the whole team when I say how excited we are to accelerate and support their technology to market.”
Spiritus CEO Charles Cadieu spoke on the partnership, commenting, “TDK Ventures is an ideal investor and partner in this space. In addition to their financial support, it’s incredible to see that TDK goodness also means the support of a huge network of people and organizations with the same vision as ours of improving the world through technology. We are already experiencing the benefits of their support.”
The investment in Spiritus represents another example of TDK and TDK Ventures’ commitment to Green Transformation (“GX”) towards a net-zero and a clean tomorrow. The partnership also represents the opportunity for unique collaborations and learnings across TDK business units, including sensor technologies and improved understandings of the carbon capture landscape and the “art of the possible” for future endeavors.
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